Have you ever picked up a copy of The Chief and wondered, “Where are the youth voices in our community?”
As a youth, I feel it’s important to know about what’s going on around town in a way that appeals to me. It’s hard for me to find news that I can dig into with passion and interest. If we are the community’s future, where is our voice? We need to create the future to have one, and our future depends on the actions we take now.
I would like to see a regular section in The Squamish Chief dedicated to youth. It could be a one-to-two page informative section about things like hot topics and community news that matters to youth. With The Chief now being a free newspaper, it is a great time to introduce something like this as more and more youth may be starting to pick up the paper.
There could be an advertising section for companies and services looking to gain attention from youth. There could be an upcoming events section to notify youth about things like concerts, movie nights, and other youth focussed events (of course, many of which are virtual at this time). There could be a jobs section for businesses looking to hire youth. Finally and most importantly, there could be a news section written by youth journalists. This section could have youth-related stories and information about things like council actions and youth initiatives to promote youth involvement and interest in things that are happening in our town. There are a lot of big conversations happening in our community and globally - the pandemic, racism, gender equality and the health of our environment.
Let’s help give Squamish youth their rightful voice. The future of Squamish is a future that we will be helping to shape, and we can start now.
Grant Boguski, 13
Squamish
Editor’s note: The Chief is working on creating a pilot youth page for an edition of the paper this fall.
